Manning to argue against trial in Wikileaks case

AP Demonstrators stand in support of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning outside of Fort Meade, Md., on Tuesday. By The Associated Press FORT MEADE, Md. — Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, charged in the biggest security breach in U.S. history, is seeking to avoid trial by arguing before a military court at Fort Meade, Md., that he has already been punished enough. Manning is expected to testify Tuesday in a pretrial hearing that is set to run through Sunday, that he was locked up alone in a small cell for nearly nine months at Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va., and forced to sleep naked for several nights — treatment his lawyers say constituted illegal punishment.  Military judges can dismiss all charges if pretrial punishment is particularly egregious, but that rarely happens. The usual remedy is credit at sentencing for time served, said Lisa M. Windsor, a retired Army colonel and former Army judge advocate now in private practice in Washington. In a 1956 case, U.S. v. Bayhand, a military appeals court ordered all charges dismissed against a soldier who had been forced during his pretrial confinement to do hard labor alongside a sentenced prisoner. The court ruled that the soldier had been given an illegal order. Since then, there have been few, if any, cases in which pretrial punishment has led to dismissal of all charges. Lt. Col. Eric Carpenter, chairman of the criminal law department at the judge advocates school in Charlottesville, Va., said he couldn't find one but he couldn't say for sure that the remedy hasn't been granted. Manning has also offered to take responsibility for the leak by pleading guilty to reduced charges. The military judge hasn't yet ruled on the offer and prosecutors have not said whether they would still pursue the charges against him. Watch the Top Videos on NBCNews.com  He was kept at the Marine Corps brig from July 2010 to April 2011. The military contends the treatment at Quantico was proper, given Manning's classification as a maximum-security detainee who posed a risk of injury to himself or others. He was later moved to Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where he was re-evaluated and given a medium-security classification. A United Nations investigator called the conditions of Manning's time at Quantico cruel, inhuman and degrading, but stopped short of calling it torture. The 24-year-old native of Crescent, Okla., faces possible life imprisonment if convicted of aiding the enemy, the most serious of the 22 charges. He is accused of sending hundreds of thousands of classified Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and more than 250,000 diplomatic cables to the secret-spilling website WikiLeaks while he was working as an intelligence analyst in Baghdad in 2009 and 2010. More content from NBCNews.com: South Korea to sack Tampa socialite Jill Kelley as honorary consul Search for missing Colorado boy suspended as lake sweep yields no clues Woman denies murder to avenge husband's death Columbine survivor turns to Occupy LA to battle foreclosure Video: Should children use medical marijuana? 'They didn't seem afraid': Wild coyotes pay visit to Chicago's Wrigley Field Follow US news from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.